


Limerence

by snoot



Category: Magic: The Gathering
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-23
Updated: 2016-02-15
Packaged: 2018-05-15 19:26:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5796922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snoot/pseuds/snoot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ral Zarek is starting his senior year of college off right - with a ridiculous course load, an incredibly demanding lab, and a penchant for caffeine-induced breakdowns. All he needs now is a distractingly cute lab partner.</p><p>Oh, wait.</p><p>He has that, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Ral Zarek was dying.

He rubbed his eyes tiredly with the back of his hand, completely unable to focus on anything other than the thin, colored lines of his screensaver as they snaked across the screen. The pattern had  to loop at some point, and he was hell-bent on figuring out when. The collection of empty coffee cups he had amassed was only a testament to his efforts.

All around him, people were coming and going. The coffee shop in the library tended to stay busier than the others scattered around campus, probably because of the sheer convenience. When you stumbled into the library late at night with three papers, a presentation, and a hefty fuck-ton of homework to do, the coffee was  _ there  _ for you. No one judged you if you decided to have a public breakdown at one a.m. in the library café. Not even the baristas.

(They wouldn’t let you stay all night, though. Ral knew from experience.)

During the day, however, most of the crowd was just students stopping by on their way to or from class. At two p.m. on a Thursday afternoon, Ral’s dead-eyed stare and hopelessly rumpled clothes looked  _ completely _ out of place. No one had taken the seat next to him at any point in the entire three hours he had been in the café. Not that he blamed them. He wouldn’t have wanted to sit next to the guy who looked like he was decomposing, either.

And it was only the second week of the semester.

Ral blinked, his vision blurring. He was so tired that he didn’t even feel human anymore. His course load this semester was an absolute nightmare. It had seemed like a good idea to take a few extra classes over the summer through the technical college, but three weeks ago he had found out rather suddenly that none of the credits were comparable to what his physics minor required. Because God hated him. So in addition to his labs, his lectures, and the foreign language requirement he  _ still _ hadn’t gotten around to, Ral was also suffering under the sheer workload of his physics class.

The colored bands of his screensaver slowly floated up into the top right corner of the screen, then twisted away and back down to the left. God, he cared  _ so much _ about this screensaver right now.

There was almost definitely something better he should have been doing right now. The class that ate up most of his time was his Monday lab - it was three hours of synthesis experimentation between a handful of engineering majors and some senior psych majors. The lab’s focus was on deep brain stimulation to treat Parkinson’s in a rat model, but it was paired with a Tuesday-Thursday lecture on biophysics, or some shit like that. Everything was already starting to blur together.

It didn’t help that his adviser, the head of the department, was also in charge of the lab. Niv Mizzet had known Ral for the longer than he had known any of the other students in the lab, and thought it was entirely appropriate to have Ral bending over backwards to do jobs that he really should have had his assistant doing. Of course, Ral always did it – partly out of spite, and partly because he genuinely liked working under Niv Mizzet, even if he complained about it more often than not.

Honestly, who wouldn’t complain about being told to organize hundreds of magnets by size, especially if they were  _ all the same size _ ?

Ral yawned, rubbing at his eye again. The band of colors bounced off of the bottom of the screen and floated back up to the top – he had definitely seen that movement before, but he would have to keep watching to see if the pattern was closed. If it moved back to the left at a right angle, then the next direction it went in should be-

“Ral Zarek!”

He looked up suddenly and almost spilled his coffee everywhere. At first, Ral couldn’t figure out who had called his name – maybe the screensaver? – but then he spotted a familiar face making its way toward his table. It was Jace, his partner from the brain lab. Here. In the library café.

Wait. Was it Monday?

What time was it?  _ Was he supposed to be in class? _

Ral panicked briefly before he realized that, no, it wasn’t Monday - he had just never seen Jace outside of the lab. He might not have even recognized him if it weren’t for the obnoxiously blue hoodie he had on.

…That was a complete lie. Jace was cute – Ral had made a note to see him only for three hours on Mondays to minimize the amount of time spent playing mental Twister to keep from getting distracted by his lab partner’s face. The weird fluttering thing his heart did around Jace registered as a legitimate medical concern that he should probably share with his doctor.

“Ral?” Jace repeated. It suddenly occurred to Ral that he had just been staring dumbly ahead while Jace approached, and had completely failed to acknowledge him in any way.

“Uh,” he said.

“Sorry, you look busy.” Jace frowned slightly. Ral glanced down at his laptop, which was still playing the screensaver.

“I’m not,” he said. “Hey, Beleren.” In the lab, Niv Mizzet was on a last name basis with his students – spending so much time with the professor had made Ral pick up the habit.

“Um. Hi.” Jace shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Sorry, I just… Saw you sitting here and I felt like I should say hi, or something.” Ral’s heart did that weird flutter again and he forgot to reply. Jace glanced away quickly, then made some sort of vague gesture with his hand. “Anyway, uh, this is my roommate, Lavinia.”

The hand gesture became less vague when Ral noticed the person Jace was gesturing to. She was tall and serious-looking, with short black hair and a very obvious frown.

“We’ve met,” she said.

“Have we?” Ral squinted, but he couldn’t quite place her face. They didn’t have a class together, or… Actually, they  _ could _ have a class together and he wouldn’t know it. Calculus? Spanish?

“I placed him under citizen’s arrest last semester,” Lavinia answered.

Oh. It was  _ her _ .

“In my defense,” Ral said, “it was finals week.”

“You fell asleep in the fountain behind the arts building.”  Ral was silent. “ _ In  _ it.”

An absolutely mortifying eight seconds of silence passed between the three of them. Ral could feel their eyes on him even as he sipped his coffee and looked pointedly at the wall to his right. There was a poster of a kitten with huge eyes dangling from a tree branch – the text at the bottom said, “Hang in there!”

He was trying.

“Well,” Lavinia said, breaking the silence. “I have class, so. I’ll see you at home.” She touched Jace lightly on the arm, then looked at Ral. “Don’t do anything illegal,” she said firmly. Then she turned and left, disappearing back into the crowd. Jace sighed.

“Sorry,” he said, shouldering off his backpack and pulling out the chair opposite Ral. “She means well, but she can be a little extreme sometimes.”

…Was he just going to sit down?

“Uh, it’s fine,” Ral said. He scrambled to move some of the empty coffee cups that were covering practically the entire table. The fact that he couldn’t physically remember getting up to get some of these didn’t seem as concerning as it probably should have.

“Is it alright if I sit here?” Jace asked. He was already sitting.

“Uh,” Ral said, again. Great conversational skills.

“I didn’t want to bother you if you were busy,” Jace added, “but you said you weren’t, so I thought maybe I could… Sit here while I wait for class. If that’s ok.”

Ral looked up from haphazardly sliding cups around to see that Jace was… Blushing? Fuck, he was making him feel awkward. It was weird to see Jace outside of class, yeah, but that didn’t mean that Ral had to be a dick about it.

“No, that’s totally fine,” he said, immediately looking back down to try and clear the table faster. There was no obvious place to put all of the cups, so Ral just crowded them around his laptop and tried not to push any off of the table on accident. Jace smiled.

“Thanks.” He took his own computer out of his bag and set it up in what little space was available, then immediately went to typing something up. Ral watched him for a moment before looking back down at his screensaver. He’d never find where the pattern looped now. He might as well just pack up and go back to his dorm, but he couldn’t leave now that Jace was here.

Ral sighed and reached for his coffee, then realized he had completely forgotten which cup was the one he had been drinking out of. Dammit. The one on the middle left, maybe…?

“I feel like we should be looking at rats in a lab right now,” Jace said, laughing. It caught Ral off guard and he hurriedly picked up the cup, only to discover that it was completely empty. He’d look like an idiot if he put it back down and picked up another, so he pretended to take a drink while nodding.

“Yeah, me too,” he said. “When I saw you at first, I thought it was Monday. But it’s not.”

“It’s Thursday,” Jace agreed. He went back to typing, then looked up again a few seconds later. “So what have you been doing? Here, I mean. It looks like you’ve been here for a while.” With all of the cups on the table, Ral couldn’t really deny it. He took another pretend-drink out of his cup just for good measure before he put it down.

What  _ had _ he been doing here?

“Homework,” Ral lied. “The usual.”

“Oh, yeah,” Jace said. “Doesn’t Dr. Mizzet give a lot? You have him for your synthesis lecture too, right? Not just the lab?”

“It’s actually  _ Niv _ Mizzet. He gets mad if you leave out the ‘Niv’ part,” Ral replied. “But yeah. He expects you to prioritize his class over everything else.” Jace scrunched up his face.

“I hate professors who are like that,” he said. “I have a couple of them this semester, though. For both of my majors.” Jace sighed and ran his hand through his hair. Ral tried very hard not to notice how cute it looked when his bangs were sticking straight up like that.

“Both?”

“Yeah,” Jace said. “Psych and pre-law.”

“Ah.”

“And you’re just engineering?”

“Yeah. Electrical,” Ral said. Jace nodded, waited for a moment and a half, and then went back to typing.

Well, so much for that line of conversation.

Talking about something unrelated to rats or brains was nice, though, even if Ral had the social skills of a piece of bread. He couldn’t quite shake the weird feeling that came with seeing Jace outside of the lab. Ral wouldn’t presume to say they were friends, but he didn’t  _ dislike _ Jace by any means. He took good notes and knew what the hell he was talking about, but also knew when to stay out of the way, which was honestly all Ral could ask for in a lab partner.

And Jace was here, now, in the library. Sitting with him. Talking to him.

Ral didn’t understand why.

They were silent for a while. Ral would occasionally look up at Jace, who was back to typing away at something on his computer. Every now and then Ral would get it in his head to say something and start the conversation back up, but he couldn’t think of anything worthwhile to say. Something about the weather? Something about the weekend? Something about-

“Thanks again,” Jace said, standing up. He had apparently finished whatever he was doing and packed his stuff up in the time that Ral spent zoning out. “For letting me sit with you, I mean. It was good to see you.”

Good to see him. Ral wasn’t certain he was fully processing everything that was happening.

“You too,” he said stiffly. That wasn’t really the tone he had been going for, but alright. Jace gave him a tight smile.

“I’ll see you Monday?” He pulled on his backpack and then just stood there, evidently waiting for Ral’s response. His hair was still sticking straight up, and Ral’s heart did that weird thing again despite his best efforts to make it stop.

“Monday,” Ral said. Jace gave an awkward half-wave before he left; Ral watched him go, unable to pull his eyes away from the doors that Jace had left through. A few moments passed before he managed to look back at the table, still crowded with cups. His laptop screen had gone completely black – it was in sleep mode. Ral closed it, then slowly lowered his head until his forehead was resting against the top of his computer. He groaned.

It was going to be a long semester.

 


	2. Chapter 2

If it weren’t for the sudden fuck-up with his physics credits, Ral wouldn’t have to worry about being awake and fully functional at eight a.m.  Shoving two unplanned classes into his schedule right before the start of the semester meant that he’d had to swap his lab time around, and taking the earliest one had been the only possible option.

So here he was, at eight a.m. sharp on Monday morning, running on three hours of sleep and a disgusting blend of coffee and Monster Energy.

Despite the hour, Ral was almost always one of the first ones – if not _the_ first – waiting in the lab. He had spent the past twenty minutes sitting silently at the table while he finished his drink and tried to wake up. Niv Mizzet was working on something at his computer, and didn’t look up at or acknowledge his students in any way as they filtered in from the hallway. He didn’t even look up for Maree, his TA, who was obviously trying to get his attention by hovering around his desk.

Ral was watching her awkwardly skirt in and out of Niv Mizzet’s line of sight when Jace came through the door. He was wearing the same blue hoodie as always, and it looked like he had at least _tried_ to brush out his bedhead. Besides that, nothing else about Jace’s appearance suggested that he had just rolled out of bed. He smiled and waved, and Ral attributed the sudden tightening in his chest to all of the caffeine he’d just dumped into his system.

“You look tired,” Jace said, coming over. “Long weekend?”

Ral opened his mouth to explain why, exactly, he’d only gotten three hours of sleep, but then decided that Jace didn’t need to know that he had spent all night refining his Dark Souls speed run tactics.

“We all have our demons,” he said, seriously.

“True.”

 Jace sighed as he took his seat on the opposite side of the table and started unpacking his stuff. Ral glanced at the clock over the door – there were still a few minutes before class actually started, and he was caught between wanting to keep the conversation going, and wanting to keep his mouth shut to keep from saying anything awkward or horrible. More than anything, Ral hated that he was even having this problem in the first place. The fact that he was even remotely worried about just having a normal conversation with his lab partner was more frustrating than it should have been.

“What about you?” he asked. Talking about something other than the lab for once had been nice, and Ral didn’t want to immediately fall back into the lull of, “Can you hand me that?” and, “What was that number again?”

“Huh?” Jace looked up from flipping through his lab notebook.

“You don’t look tired at all,” Ral said. “Does that mean you had a _short_ weekend?” Jace waved his hand.

“This is going to sound weird,” he said, “but Lavinia makes me go to bed at, like, ten every night.”

“She tried to _arrest_ me. Forcing you to get your eight hours doesn’t really seem that weird.”

“I still feel like I should apologize for that,” Jace said, reddening.

“I’m not actually sure sleeping in a fountain is even illegal,” Ral said, “but if she had just left me there, I might’ve just drowned. Besides, even if it _was_ illegal, it’s not like you make the law.”

Jace laughed, and Ral caught himself smiling down at the table like an idiot.

Maree had apparently gotten tired of being ignored by Niv Mizzet, because she suddenly clapped her hands together and started giving out instructions. It was completely unnecessary. They all knew what they were doing already – this wasn’t some intro level course, and they basically worked out their own procedures. Jace actually seemed to tune in to what she was saying, but Ral was much more interested in making faces at Maree whenever she turned towards his table. She was doing a better job than usual at keeping a straight face, but Ral didn’t miss the way her eye twitched when she looked at him.

Maree finished eventually, having explained how to properly hold the rats at least six times within a span of ten minutes, then went back to awkwardly standing around Niv Mizzet’s desk with nothing to do. She glared at Ral, but evidently decided not to come over and threaten to kick him out of class.

Again.

(She couldn’t _actually_ kick him out – she didn’t have the authority. But that didn’t stop her from trying.)

“So, are you ready to give this rat Parkinson’s?” Jace asked, turning around. It seemed just a _little_ morbid that he was smiling as he said it.

Well, back to the rat-talk, then. It was better than nothing.

The work wasn’t too hard, but that was probably because Ral left most of the actual rat-handling to Jace, who apparently had experience with this sort of thing. Jace explained while he worked: he spent a semester starving rats of sodium, then testing to see if taste had any effect on how much salt they ate, then starving them again to retest. Ral understood the principles behind it, but only about half of what Jace was actually saying. Not that he really minded; Ral had just discovered that Jace had a dimple on his right cheek.

Besides, it wasn’t _just_ rat-talk. It was an actual conversation (about rats, sure, but they were _different_ rats), complete with back-and-forth questions and anecdotes. It was a little easier to talk to Jace without feeling like his heart was going to crawl up his throat when Ral was in his own element. Fiddling with a tiny, rat-sized neurostimulator while he talked was much more comfortable than sweating and pretending to drink out of an empty coffee cup.

The conversation helped speed up the work, too, and by the time Maree was clapping again to draw their attention back at the end of the class, Ral and Jace had made significant progress. Ral had already mentally written half of the lab report. Maree launched into another roundabout explanation of ethics and lab safety, taking a brief, ten-second break in the middle to scream at the poor guy who had started packing up while she was still talking. Niv Mizzet cut her off after a while (much to her indignation, Ral noticed) and dismissed the class without ever standing up from his desk. The room erupted into a cacophony of scraping chairs and zipping backpacks.

“Good job today, Beleren,” Ral said, taking his time. Jace, who was in the middle of hurriedly cramming his lab notebook into his bag, looked up. He smiled.

“Thanks,” he said. There was a brief moment where they locked eyes in silence, but Jace quickly went back to packing up. “Sorry. I have a class right after this.”

“What class?”

“It’s actually the lecture portion of this lab,” Jace answered. “Sorry. Seriously, I would stay and talk” – he pulled his bookbag on and fixed his hoodie – “but I think my professor might actually kill and eat me if I’m late.” Ral couldn’t help but glance at Niv Mizzet.

“I know the feeling,” he said. “I’ll see you next week.”

“Actually,” Jace started. He cut himself off, standing an awkward distance away from the table in a way that didn’t fully convey whether he was leaving or staying. “I was thinking that maybe-”

“Zarek.”

Ral’s attention shifted from Jace to Niv Mizzet, who was hunched over something at his desk. He waved Ral over with one hand.

“Nevermind,” Jace said quickly. “I don’t want to be late, so…” Ral nodded.

“Later, Beleren.”

Jace flashed his hand up in what was probably supposed to be a quick wave, then hurried out the door. Everyone else had already cleared out, leaving Ral alone with Maree and Niv Mizzet. He pulled his bookbag over one shoulder as he made his way to the desk at the front of the room.

“Sir?”

“I need you to copy these flyers,” Niv Mizzet said. Ral glanced briefly over at Maree, who was straightening up on of the lab tables. Something like this should really be her job, but Ral wasn’t keen on arguing. He looked down at the paper the professor was holding.

The words “ _Ral Zarek is a stupid, dumb idiot”_ were printed neatly across the page in bold letters.

Oh, of course. Of course it was a fucking joke. He was always doing shit like this.

When Ral had explained his relationship with his adviser to the guy he’d sat next to in his Physics 409 class last semester, he hadn’t really been able to put it into words. It was kind of hard to explain that he admired Niv Mizzet, was terrified of him, thought he was a genius, _and_ thought he was an idiot, all at the same time. They joked around a lot, but the jokes were never particularly funny. It was usually something like shocking each other with a hand buzzer, or emailing each other unwarranted pictures of hairless cats. It was all good-natured.

Or at least, Ral _thought_ it was good-natured.

_“Ral Zarek is a stupid, dumb idiot.”_

This had to be payback for the forty minute long video of engineers running things through an industrial shredder that he had made Niv Mizzet watch last Tuesday.

Touché, Niv. Touché.

Niv Mizzet didn’t smile, but looked genuinely surprised when Ral reached across the desk and picked up the paper.

“How many copies do you need?” he asked. The professor didn’t have an answer. “I’ll make fifty, then. If you end up needing more, then I’m sure Maree would do it.”

“Zarek-”

“No, really, it’s not a problem.” Ral smiled. “I’ll just use the copier in the engineering department. Your code is still the same, right?”

 

\---

 

His code was still the same.

Ral stood and waited while the copier slowly churned out fifty copies of _“Ral Zarek is a stupid dumb idiot_ , _”_ printed on the nicest cardstock he could find in the workroom. Niv Mizzet would make him suffer for this later, probably in the form of manual labor. Ral didn’t really mind.

He still stuck on what Jace had said before he left the lab.

_“I was thinking that maybe-”_

He was thinking that maybe _what_? That he might not be in class on Monday? Ral would definitely be able to manage without him, but the thought of not seeing Jace for two weeks was…

Well, it wasn’t a good feeling.

Ral sighed, staring down at the pages as they slid out of the copier and into the tray. He had Jace’s phone number – they’d swapped info on the first day of class, but had never texted each other. It was well within his power to just… _Text_ Jace. To talk to him.

About… Things.

Ah, fuck.

The copier shuddered as the last paper slid into the tray. Ral mindlessly mashed a few buttons to see if something would happen, but nothing did. This was bullshit. He _liked_ Jace – it shouldn’t be that hard to just _ask him out_. Ral looked down at the paper tray. The words “ _Ral Zarek is a stupid, dumb idiot”_ started up at him. He sighed again.

Fifty more copies couldn’t hurt.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ral Zarek is a stupid, dumb idiot.
> 
> (Also, here's my shout-out to Domoz: AHHHHHHH!!!! (that's me shouting))


	3. Chapter 3

Ral gave himself a week to sort his shit out.

He subsequently spent the majority of the next week doing everything _but_ sort his shit out. When he’d done all of his physics homework twice, he rewrote two lab reports in entirety and made great headway on his Spanish project (which wasn’t due until the end of the semester, but hey – anything for a distraction).

And so, when Monday rolled back around, Ral had done every conceivable thing he could think to do _except_ put any degree of thought to the whole Jace thing, whatever that was.

He sighed and sank a little lower in his seat, eyes fixed on the door of the lab. Jace hadn’t showed up for class yet, which technically meant that there was still time left to figure out what he was going to do about all of… This. _Fuck_ , why was it so _hard?_ Ral never had this sort of problem, which was probably due to the fact that he never spent any considerable amount of time actually thinking about this sort of problem. He had so much other shit going on in his life at any given moment that these kinds of _thoughts_ had never even registered as important.

It was more than a little irritating. Ral needed to focus on graduating on time, not on Jace’s stupid fucking dimple. All of this research with the rats was actually incredibly interesting, and it was frustrating that he spent a good three-quarters of his time in the lab thinking not about rats, but about how it would probably be kind of nice to hold Jace’s hand.

He couldn’t live like this. He _had_ to do something about it.

“Reading through your lab reports,” Niv Mizzet said, dragging Ral out of his thoughts rather abruptly, “I’ve noticed some common themes. None of which are good. I’ve been tempted to just run some of your reports through my shredder.”

Ral glanced at the clock over the door. Eight a.m.

Jace wasn’t in class.

Alright. That sealed it, then – Ral would redouble his efforts at ignoring everything even remotely attractive about Jace, and that would be the end of it.

“I have no idea how some of you have made it this far if you can’t even write a complete sentence,” Niv Mizzet continued. “Honestly. It’s disgraceful. If you have any hope of passing this class, let alone getting even the most _deplorable_ of entry-level positions in a professional setting….” Ral settled in to listen to Niv Mizzet’s spiel, feeling that some modicum of stability had been returned to his life. If Jace wasn’t here, then Ral could handle the experiment on his own and not have to worry about distractions. From there, he could just stop thinking about Jace altogether, and move on with every other aspect of his life. Easy.

“In short,” Niv Mizzet said, “I never want to see this level of absolute _detritus_ from any of you ever-“ He stopped. “Mr. Beleren. You’re late.”

Ral’s head shot up.

There was Jace, standing in the doorway, looking sweaty and out of breath.

And somehow, despite that, cute.

_Fuck_. There was no way he could just ignore this.

“Sorry,” Jace managed to say after a few moments of hesitation. Niv Mizzet made no reply, and Jace kept his head down as he made his way over to the table where Ral was sitting. The lab was dead silent for at least a solid thirty seconds while Niv Mizzet stared coolly at the back of Jace’s head, completely content to just let him suffer. Ral grimaced in a way that he thought was probably sympathetic, but Jace didn’t look up from the table.

“As I was saying,” Niv Mizzet started, but he seemed to have lost his train of thought. Instead of continuing, he just waved one hand and walked back around to sit behind his desk; the silence of the lab rose to a quiet murmur as everyone slowly got to work.

“Sorry,” Jace said again. He moved to start taking his things out of his backpack but still didn’t look up. Ral glanced at the clock again.

“You’re only three minutes late,” he said. “Niv Mizzet is just a dick.”

Jace sighed and finally looked up, giving Ral the ghost of a smile. He looked like he hadn’t slept in years and he was still a little out of breath, presumably from having run to class. Ral realized he was staring, so he cleared his throat and gestured vaguely at nothing in particular.

“Did Lavinia forget to put you to bed at nine?” he asked. Jace looked confused for a second, then smiled a little wider.

“Ten, actually. I can’t believe you remembered that,” he said. “She tried, but I had to finish my psych presentation. The lecture part of this class – the thing I have right after this – is actually really hard. The workload is ridiculous.” He flipped quickly through his lab notebook until he found his notes from last week. “I’m kind of worried about this class, too. About falling behind.”

“We were getting an earful about how shitty our lab reports were right before you came in,” Ral said. He felt a pang of guilt at having said that when he saw the panicked look on Jace’s face.

“Really? Was ours shitty?” Ral shook his head.

“I guarantee you it was fucking perfect,” he said. “I rewrote it at least twice, and I know what I’m doing. But Niv Mizzet wouldn’t ever congratulate us for doing anything right, so I wouldn’t worry about it.” Jace nodded, but he didn’t seem completely convinced.

“You wrote it more than once?” he asked. “I thought the notes I sent you were clear.”

Ral had a very brief, controlled mental meltdown.

_Your notes were fine. I only rewrote it so I could put off thinking about your stupid cute face._

“My computer crashed while I was saving it the first time,” Ral lied quickly. “So it got corrupted and I had to rewrite everything. But it was fine.”

“Oh,” Jace said, concerned. “I hope you didn’t lose anything important.”

“What?”

“When your computer crashed. I hope you didn’t lose anything else.”

Ral blinked. _Oh_.

“No, just the report,” he said. “Anyway, I had a few ideas about what we could do with the pulse generator, since it’s so small. We’ll want a longer lead if we don’t embed it.”

“Will that change anything?” Jace asked.

“Just the procedure, so you’ll need to go back and rewrite that part,” Ral answered. “I can handle the extension without a problem.” Jace nodded, already flipping back through his notebook to make the edit.

Something had changed between them that day in the library. Ral wasn’t really sure what it was, but it had become much easier to just talk comfortably while they worked. There, in the moment, the distraction didn’t bother him. How could it, especially if he was making Jace laugh with awful jokes about Maree? Every time Jace laughed, his heart flipped, and Ral knew that he was just digging himself a deeper grave. He didn’t have it in him to ignore how he felt anymore, not with Jace right in front of him.

But if he couldn’t ignore it, and he couldn’t live in limbo, then there was only one other option.

By the end of the lab, they had gotten a few preliminary tests done with the pulse generator, and had only suffered three interruptions from Maree, who could no doubt hear the jokes that Ral was making at her expense. Ral watched Jace packing up out of the corner of his eye and told himself that this was it. This was the day he would ask Jace out.

Immediately after the thought crossed his mind, Ral felt his heart knot up in his throat.

Alright. Not today.

“If you’re still worried about the last lab report, I can ask,” he said. It was actually the exact opposite of what he wanted to do, but it was better than sitting in silence. It seemed to still be eating at Jace, anyway – he hadn’t completely relaxed at all during the lab.

“No, it’s ok,” Jace replied, zipping his backpack. “I trust what you said. I don’t think Dr. Mizzet would give you an answer, anyway.”

“He definitely wouldn’t,” Ral agreed, not bothering to correct Jace about Niv Mizzet’s name. “I’ll see you next week, then.” When he looked up, Jace hadn’t gone anywhere. Ral coughed awkwardly. “Aren’t you going to miss your next class?”

“Do you want to go get lunch tomorrow?” Jace asked suddenly, and Ral almost choked on his own spit. “I don’t know what your schedule is like, but I have this weird gap around one in the afternoon and I thought that maybe you would want to… Get food. With me.”

“Uh,” Ral managed to say. Was this actually happening?

“Nothing fancy,” Jace said quickly. His face was red. “There’s a Panera Bread right off campus, and-”

“Yes,” Ral said. “I would love to go to lunch with you.”

Jace was dumbstruck for a few moments. Then he broke into a grin.

“Great. Great! Wow.” He seemed relieved, and suddenly very relaxed. “Okay! I’ll… Meet you there?”

“Tomorrow,” Ral said. “At one.” His head was spinning. It was a good thing he was already sitting down, because he felt like he was on the verge of passing out.

“At one,” Jace echoed, smiling. He stood there for a few more seconds, just staring at Ral.

Ral gaped back at him.

“Uh,” he said, intelligently. “The.”

“The? Oh!” Jace rushed to push his stool back under the table. “I’m going to be so late. I’m sorry. I’ll see you tomorrow!” Ral tried to raise his hand to wave goodbye, but his brain wasn’t listening. He sat and watched Jace as he hurried out into the hall.

Ral kept sitting well after Jace had disappeared from view, too shocked to move. He didn’t notice Maree coming up behind him until she put a hand on his shoulder, making him jump.

“Class is over,” she said helpfully. Ral looked from her face to Niv Mizzet’s – they had seen everything.

“I need to go,” Ral said, jerking out of his seat and reaching for his bag. He had another class to get to, but he needed at least twenty minutes to sit in the bathroom and scream silently inside his own head.

“If you’re sick, you should go to the clinic,” Maree said. Ral ignored her. “I’m serious! You look like you’re about to throw up.”

In all honesty, he _did_ feel like he might throw up.

But he had never felt better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Absolutely nothing in this chapter would be possible without Domoz! I mean it. Absolutely nothing.


	4. Chapter 4

Pants. Keys. Wallet. Jacket. Keys.

Wait, no. He had those already. Alright.

Ral compulsively reached to pat his wallet in the back pocket of his jeans despite having already checked for it at least twelve times since leaving his room. He was nervous – not about going to lunch with Jace, but about the fact that he _didn’t_ feel nervous about going to lunch with Jace. All of the palm-sweating and heart-flipping had just… Evaporated.

He wasn’t complaining. All Ral had wanted since this started was to be able to think about Jace _without_ feeling like part of his brain was dying. Now he had it – and he was worried. Yesterday after lab, Ral had felt like he needed to check himself into the hospital for the shit his heart was trying to pull. Today, nothing.

He, Ral Zarek, was going to lunch with his lab partner, Jace Beleren, and he didn’t feel nervous about it.

Something had to be wrong.

Ral balled up his fists in his jacket pockets and stepped out of the elevator. The dorm lobby was still decorated for the first week of class, and the names of all the incoming freshman were up on the walls. It was stupid and kitschy and entirely too colorful, and Ral didn’t know why the RA’s bothered with shit like this if they weren’t ever going to take the decorations _down_. He eyed one of the colorful construction paper cut-out hands (very original) that was taped to the wall as he walked past, then glanced down at his watch. Plenty of time.

“Hey. Zarek.”

Ral sighed, one hand already on the door. It was almost impossible to make it through the lobby without running into someone who wanted to waste his time.

“I’m busy,” he said flatly, turning around. Dack, one of the RAs, was sitting behind the front desk with his feet propped up in front of him. He was absentmindedly squeezing something that looked like a stress ball.

“You’re always busy,” Dack said. “Going _to_ places. Coming _from_ places.” He tossed the stress ball into the air but missed catching it – it hit the floor with a quiet thud. Dack swung his legs off of the desk and scooted forward in his chair as if nothing had happened. “Anyway, we’re having a meeting tonight. Be there.”

“Y’all are finally doing something about the loose outlets?” Ral asked, not particularly caring either way. He managed to avoid most of the meetings.

“ _No_ ,” Dack said, matter-of-factly. He was weirdly defensive of the slippery outlets, for whatever reason. “We’re going to talk about all of the stuff that’s gone missing from rooms.”

“You mean the stuff that’s been stolen,” Ral said. He still hadn’t taken his hand off the door.

“Missing, stolen, same thing.” Dack waved his hand dismissively. “Point is, we’re going to talk about room safety tonight. Hide stuff, lock your doors, that kind of thing.”

“Okay.” Ral was pretty sure that most of the missing stuff had disappeared from rooms that _had_ been locked, but he didn’t want to continue the conversation. He pushed the door open.

“Hey!” Dack called, and Ral made no attempt to hide his incredibly audible sigh. “Where are you going?”

“Out,” he answered, even though it was absolutely none of Dack’s business. Out of all of the RAs, Dack was easily the worst; in addition to being a smug bastard, he was constantly sticking his nose where it didn’t belong.

“Ok, well, there’s gonna be pizza at the meeting,” Dack said. Ral wished he would shut up. Sitting at the lobby desk always made the RAs chatty. “You like pizza, Zarek?”

“Sure,” Ral answered, already leaving.

“What kind?”

He pretended he didn’t hear the question.

 

\---

 

One o’clock was apparently peak Panera bread time – the parking lot was packed with cars when Ral walked up, and he realized that he had forgotten to ask Jace what kind of car he drove, if he drove at all. He looked down at his phone as he walked, scrolling through the text conversation they’d had last night. There were a lot of _ok!_ ’s and _see you then_ ’s just to confirm, but nothing more specific than that.

Alright, well, he’d just go in and-

A flash of blue caught Ral’s eye as he looked up from his phone. It was Jace, sitting in the front seat of a beaten-up sedan and waving with both hands. It would be a cold day in hell when Jace Beleren wasn’t wearing that worn-out blue sweatshirt.

Ral raised a hand to wave back, but Jace was in the middle of forcing his door open and didn’t notice. Ral wondered if he should be helping instead of just awkwardly standing there watching Jace struggle, but he didn’t move to do anything. The door swung open after a few seconds and Jace climbed out, fumbling with his keys. There was a book tucked under his arm.

“You’re here!” he said, glancing at Ral as he jammed his key into the lock.

“I’m here,” Ral echoed. Jace swore under his breath while he fought with the key to get the door locked. “You been here a while?”

“Not long,” Jace said. “I thought it would be weird to go in and get a table at a place like this, so I just waited.”

“Yeah.” Ral snorted. “It isn’t exactly a five-star restaurant.” He immediately regretted having phrased it like that. Jace finally managed to get the door locked and looked up, pushing his hair out of his face with the back of one hand.

“It’s close to campus,” he said, sounding a little disappointed. “I thought it would be a decent enough place.” Ral could feel the back of his neck burning in embarrassment.

“I was joking. It’s better than what I usually eat,” he said, smiling in a way that he hoped looked apologetic.

Jace gave him a sort of half-smile in return but didn’t say anything. He didn’t move, either, except to stick his free hand into the front pocket of his hoodie, and Ral mentally kicked himself for being a dick.

“I’ve eaten nothing but dining hall slop for the past month,” he said. “I usually don’t even remember to eat real food on weekdays, so this is… Cool.”

_Cool_? The best adjective he could come up with was _cool_?

“Well, let’s go get some _cool_ sandwiches, or something,” Jace said. He didn’t laugh but, he sounded less crestfallen than he had before and Ral decided that _cool_ had been an okay word to use, after all.

Ral held the door on the way in, as if that somehow made up for not helping with the car door earlier. What he’d said before about not eating anything other than food from the dining hall had been true – Ral couldn’t actually remember the last time he had gone to eat at an actual restaurant (was Panera Bread even an actual restaurant?) while classes had been in session. Come to think of it, he couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten food that had real nutritional value. He was pretty sure that he still had money on his meal card from freshman year.

It was about as packed inside as the parking lot had suggested. They waited in line for a while, making the occasional comment about how many types of breads lined the wall behind the counter. During finals week at the end of his first semester at college, Ral had done nothing but stress-eat bread bowls from the dining hall. He had fallen out of the habit when he realized that _everything_ was stressful, and he just couldn’t eat that much bread.

They made it to the front of the line eventually. The cashier mumbled something about being too busy to make them keep waiting at the counter, so he passed Ral a little plastic placard with a number on it and told him to find a seat. They found an empty booth amidst the horde of people and took it before anyone else could.

Jace had put his book and his keys on the table when he sat down, but Ral couldn’t read the title from where he was sitting. He pointed at the book with his thumb.

“That any good?”

“Huh?” Jace looked up from his phone and slipped it back into his pocket. He followed the line of Ral’s thumb with his eyes until he realized what he was pointing at. “Oh. It’s ok. Really dry, but I have to read it for my history class.” He sighed and lifted the cover of the book with one hand (Ral got a glimpse of the title – _Condensed History of Magna Graecia_ ), then let it fall. “I’ve been falling behind in pretty much everything else because of the psych part of that lab.”

“You mentioned it was hard,” Ral said. It was a 400 level synthesis class, so he hadn’t doubted it for a second. The psych department was notorious for being full of tough professors.

“Dr. Alhammarret is literally the worst,” Jace said seriously. “I get the feeling he hates me, but I don’t know what I did wrong.” He passed a hand through his hair, then smoothed it back down again. Ral watched him intently. “I’m trying to finish out my psych major requirements this year so that I can hopefully deal with pre-law and both of my minors next year-“

Ral held up a hand to stop him.

“Do you hate yourself, Beleren? Double majoring _and_ double minoring?” He was suffering enough with just one of each. Jace smiled weakly, shrugging. “So you’re minoring in something ridiculous like computer science and archaeology, right?”

“History,” he answered, “and Spanish.”

“You said you were gonna work on those next year,” Ral said. “Super-senior?” Jace nodded.

“And probably super-super-senior after that,” Jace sighed. He looked down at the table where his fingers were drumming out a random pattern. Looking back up, he said, “I didn’t really mean for us to just come here and talk about school the whole time. I kinda meant for this to be more of a date.”

Date.

_Date_.

Somewhere deep in Ral’s mind, everything slid into place.

Of course, he had _known_ it was a date. Jace had been pretty clear in his intent. But Ral hadn’t processed the word “date” on anything more than a conceptual level until now, with Jace sitting across from him in this incredibly busy Panera Bread, and it suddenly hit him that this was really a thing that was happening. He swallowed hard. All of the nervousness that had been mysteriously absent all came rushing back at once.

Well, it had been nice to live without it for a few hours.

Jace cleared his throat, and Ral realized he was completely unaware of how much time had just passed.

“Ok, so, where do you live?” Ral asked. He snatched up the paper napkin in front of him and started ripping pieces of it off without even realizing what he was doing. If Jace noticed (he probably did), he wasn’t obtuse about it. “I mean, you drove here, so you have parking. And you live with Lavinia, so that means no dorms.”

“We rent an apartment a couple miles off campus,” Jace answered. “It’s not far. Lavinia usually bikes, but I’m… Not the biggest fan of cardio.”

“Me neither.” Ral hooked his thumb back to point at his heart. “It’s too much.”

“Mm,” Jace said, agreeing. Then he was silent.

Ral started arranging the ripped-up napkin pieces back into their original shape. Now wasn’t exactly the time to start thinking about slew of first-but-no-second dates he’d been on over the course of the past few years, but his brain had other plans, apparently.

“So you’ve known Lavinia for a long time?” he asked, and his voice _definitely_ did not crack. Not even a little.

Ok. There might have been a _little_ cracking.

“A few years,” Jace said. “I lived with another friend before, but she graduated. So I was planning on moving in with my then-girlfriend-now-ex-girlfriend after that, but it ended up not working out, so… Yeah.”

“Girlfriend?” Ral couldn’t feel his legs.

“Ex-girlfriend,” Jace corrected him. Ral hadn’t realized he had said that out loud. “Things ended… Kind of weirdly, but she’s abroad this semester. We haven’t talked since.”

Ral nodded, trying to focus on his napkin project. He was failing miserably. Things tended to go south _fast_ when ex-partners showed up in first date conversation.

“Sorry,” Jace said. “I shouldn’t-”

“Sorry for the wait,” someone said. “We’re beyond slammed right now.” Ral looked up from his hopeless napkin-rearranging just in time to watch his plate be put down in front of him. The waiter smiled serenely, sticking their order placard into the front pocket of his apron. The interruption was a blessing and its orchestrator, an angel. “You guys need anything else?”

“Oh, hey, Ral? This is my friend, Gideon.” Jace gestured toward the waiter, who immediately stuck his hand out to shake Ral’s. “Gideon, this is Ral.”

“You’re the guy from the lab?” Gideon asked. Ral was temporarily mesmerized by how incredible his handshake was and almost missed the implication of that question. Jace had _talked_ about him.

“I guess so,” Ral said. Gideon smiled a little wider – he could probably win an election with that smile alone.

“It’s good to meet you,” he said. It was the most sincere declaration Ral had ever heard in his life. “I’d stick around and talk, but duty calls!” Gideon gave Jace a pat on the shoulder as he walked past, then disappeared through the employees-only door behind the counter.

“You met him how, exactly?” Ral asked, looking back at Jace.

“Mutual friends,” he replied. “I tutored him for a semester last year, and we wound up knowing a lot of the same people.” Ral nodded, already biting into his sandwich.

Gideon had cut in at the perfect time, and the conversation shifted while they ate. They kept away from the topic of relationships but managed to talk about everything else under the sun. Ral learned that Jace was ambidextrous, that he was here on an out of state scholarship, and that he went through a long phase of wanting to be a spy when he was a kid. When Jace asked about his favorite food, Ral had to spend five minutes explaining what chitlins were.

(Jace thought they sounded disgusting, and Ral couldn’t really blame him.)

They ate slowly, taking long breaks in between eating to talk, and it had to have been at least an hour before either of them made any move to leave. Jace had been intermittently checking the time on his phone, but it seemed to be more out of necessity than boredom. He waited until the last possible minute before telling Ral that he needed to leave sooner rather than later if he wanted to get to class on time.

Ral followed him out to the parking lot and waited while Jace fumbled with his keys. Most of the crowd had cleared out already, but the parking lot somehow seemed just as full. He was scanning the lot and trying to figure out where everyone might be (the craft store next door, maybe?) when Jace worked the door open and tossed his book into the passenger seat. He turned around to face Ral.

“I’d offer you a ride back to campus, but…” He trailed off.

“You have class,” Ral said, finishing the thought. “I can walk back. It’s not far.”

They stood there in silence for a few moments, and Ral wasn’t sure what to do. “See you Monday,” didn’t seem like the right way to say goodbye. Besides, Monday seemed like a long way away.

Jace suddenly reached out and grabbed Ral’s hand. His grip was a little tight, but Ral was too dumbstruck to do anything about it.

“This was nice,” Jace said. His voice was firm, but his face was reddening. Ral knew he probably didn’t look any better.

“It was,” he agreed. It was hard to talk around how wildly his heart was fluttering. He felt awkward just looking at Jace, so he let his eyes fall to where their hands were locked together. Jace leaned in without warning and Ral felt his lips press against his cheek.

He was fairly confident that he was just going to drop dead right there.

The kiss lasted for all of a half-second before Jace pulled back and let go of Ral’s hand. He turned to get in his car, then stopped and turned back halfway.

“I’ll text you later?”

It was phrased like a question, but Jace didn’t wait for a response. Ral was grateful – he was in absolutely no state to give one. Jace slid into the driver’s seat and pulled the door behind him, then started his car and pulled out of the lot in what had to be record time. Ral stood and watched him drive away, completely rooted to the pavement.

He stood there well after Jace had left. Another car that had turned into the lot passed the parking spot where Ral was standing at an utter crawl – the driver was giving him a stern look, but Ral couldn’t will himself to move.

Jace Beleren had kissed his cheek.

“Hey!”

Ral turned his head slowly to see who had called out to him – it was Gideon, leaning halfway out of the front door of Panera Bread.

“Hey,” he said, weakly lifting one hand to wave.

“You can’t stand there,” Gideon called. “It’s a parking spot. Sorry.” Ral let his hand fall. He looked down at his feet, then back up at Gideon, who was still waiting.

“I’m coming back in,” he said after a while. “I need a bread bowl.”

Gideon smiled knowingly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was aiming for a Valentine's day update but I took the weekend to recuperate from a long week of exams, so I ended up being a little late! As usual, I owe 10000000000 thank you's to Domoz, who is the only person who truly understands by deep-seated headcanons about Ral Zarek.

**Author's Note:**

> None of this ever could have happened without ao3 user domoz! Not only did they get me into Magic, but they've made my life a much better place for the past few months and given me the confidence and inspiration to try tackling such a big project! Thank you, domoz, from the very bottom of my heart!
> 
> I have no honest estimation about how long this will be; this chapter barely skims the top of the notes I have written for this fic, so I'm in it for the long haul. :-) Let it be said now that biophysics is completely out of my realm of expertise, but dammit, I'm trying!


End file.
